DailyDoctor: Putting The Gold Back Into The Golden Years

Vijay Rajasekhar4 min read
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Why we started DailyDoctor.

DailyDoctor is the first digital clinic serving the needs of Americans aged 65+ through proactive and preventative health. 

My cofounder, Marlon Castillo, and I set out to solve the most pressing medical needs in America. We have a bold mission: to reduce the top causes of hospitalization and death in America. As a Stanford-trained MD, I witnessed first hand that hospitals are filled with Americans who should be enjoying their golden years (65+), but were instead suffering from multiple chronic conditions, such as heart failure, lung disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Unfortunately, healthcare in America today is sickcare: patients are receiving reactive medical care after their conditions are worsening.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We realized that healthcare needs a major redesign, from reactive care to proactive medicine. So we created a new layer of healthcare, to help patients stay healthy between their doctor visits and keep them out of the hospital. This type of proactive care requires new types of workflows and a medical mindset that hasn’t existed in the past. 

At DailyDoctor, we are enabling a new kind of care. 

At DailyDoctor, patients 65 and older use telehealth to receive care from top board-certified physicians who manage health proactively with continuous healthcare data. Patients receive a monitoring kit to transmit their vitals and symptoms daily from the comfort of their home, which takes only 1 minute to complete. The DailyDoctor platform allows medical teams to analyze and triage patient data at scale. Doctors identify and treat medical issues early before they get out of hand.

This type of remote care has been shown to drastically improve medical outcomes. 

For instance, remote care can reduce the rate of hospitalizations from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by almost 70%,¹ and mortality from heart failure by 20%.²

Helping patients reach target blood pressure goals reduces the risk of stroke by 46%.³ For common cancers, home monitoring improves survival by up to 20%.

We believe every patient deserves impactful proactive care. It is our mission to make this a reality for millions of Americans with DailyDoctor.

Why 65 and older?

Americans 65 and older are at the highest risk of medical issues. 80% have at least one chronic condition and 60% have at least two or more. As we have seen during the pandemic, our eldery have worse health outcomes when infected with COVID-19 due to their underlying  chronic conditions. Moreover, Americans 65 and older are soon to outnumber children under 18 for the first time in American history as the number of adults above 65 is expected to increase by 50% in the coming decade.

Despite the higher burden of disease in our rapidly growing senior population, very few medical companies are focusing their efforts on helping these individuals fend off serious diseases.  

We believe we have a moral obligation to help our seniors and welcome the opportunity to solve tough problems to help those patients most in need.

Why Remote Care?

Your zip code or socioeconomic status should not determine your health. Unfortunately, we have seen how one’s zip code has been as important as one’s genetic code in determining health outcomes.

However, remote care can bring top medical services directly to patients no matter where they live. On any given day, California physicians on DailyDoctor are helping patients as far north as Redding and as south as Chula Vista get their chronic conditions under control, and soon will be helping patients across America. 

While adoption of virtual care has accelerated due to the pandemic, we have only scratched the surface of how it can help patients lead more proactive and healthier lives. With increasing coverage of virtual care and remote patient monitoring services by Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance companies, remote care is here to stay.

Our Progress

  • We launched DailyDoctor in California and are quickly expanding to other states.

  • We are actively helping patients with high blood pressure, heart failure, and COPD take control of their health, and will soon offer care for diabetes, cancer, and more. 

  • During the pandemic, we helped Stanford monitor the progression of COVID-19 in high-risk patients to help them access supportive care, sooner.

  • More recently, we’ve partnered with Stanford Stroke Center on a clinical study to help stroke patients get their blood pressure monitored and under control, which can help reduce the risk of subsequent strokes.¹⁰

  • We’ve raised capital financing from top tier investors like ACME, YCombinator, and Floodgate to help build out our services, and we look forward to partnering with more investors who believe in our mission to grow DailyDoctor into the top digital clinic for Americans 65 and older, focused on preventative care.

Join us on our journey to provide Americans access to the care they deserve. Together, we look forward to helping put the gold back into the golden years.

Vijay Rajasekhar

Vijay Rajasekhar

Vijay is a Stanford-trained MD, MBA. He enjoys biking in beautiful areas and researching longevity.